Consumer outfit Which? claims that manufacturers are not telling the truth when it comes to claims about battery life.

Which? has discovered that the battery life claimed by laptop manufacturers rarely lives up to reality, with our tests finding it often falls drastically short.

Almost all laptop manufacturers overstate their battery claims and in some cases battery life estimates were double what it got in the labs.

Overall Which? found that manufacturers are missing their claims not by minutes, but by hours. The most optimistic laptop manufacturers are overstating their battery life by 50 percent or more, leaving you searching for the power cable twice as often as you’d expect.

The Which? battery test involves draining the whole battery from start to finish, several times over, during various tasks.

The Acer E15 claimed a battery life of six hours Which? found it could only manage two hours 56 minutes.

Only Apple was conservative in its battery life findings The Apple MacBook Pro 13 claimed to have a battery life of ten hours - the Which test gave it 12 hours, But that is probably because it only takes a few hours before you can't listen to Coldplay any more,

The UK government is drawing up new rules with will lock up hackers for life, because they are worse than murderers.

Apparently they have been so impressed by the way that the US keeps companies going by locking up huge chunks of its population for long sentences in private prisons and they want to try it in Blighty. Ministers are concerned that malicious saboteurs who use the internet to spark civil unrest are getting off too lightly under current legislation.

Impairing a computer carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. But a new offence of "unauthorised access to a computer" will be created carrying a maximum life sentence. For the record the charge of sparking civil unrest coiuld be seen as a jokey comment on Facebook if it is taken the wrong way. However it is more likely the life sentence will apply if someone gets hurt as a result of a hack.

Apparently they are worried that a lone hacker could have the potential to disrupt food supplies, telephone networks and even energy supplies by using the internet.

Well known peripheral developer Nyko has seemed to address one of the major issues with the PlayStation Vita which is the battery concern. While Sony rates the battery life of the Vita at between 3 to 5 hours, Nyko has come up with a way to get almost triple that.

While the solution isn’t pretty, the company has come up with the Power Grip, which is a docking station-like device with two controller style grips that contain a battery that will triple your Vita batter life to an estimated 9 to 15 hours.

While it isn’t perhaps as pretty as you would like, at $24.99 it could be a better long-term investment than buying more battery packs over and over again. If you don’t have access to a power sources and you can’t recharge, this could be just the ticket. It is certainly one option that is worth looking at if you need to use the Vita on battery power for longer periods of time.

The new Circle Pad Pro for the Nintendo 3DS has pretty darned good battery life. That is a good thing, because removing the battery takes a screw driver to get the plate off to swap the AAA battery. Word is that with one fresh battery you can get about 480+ hours of game play, or 20 days if you were playing it 24 hours a day. Not bad for Nintendo.

The Circle Pro Pad accessory adds an additional thumb stick, or pad, if you will, that makes the 3DS much easier to play for a number of upcoming titles. The big one, of course, is the Resident Evil: Revelations and Monster Hunter, one of two of the big ones that support it.

Word is that we should expect more developers to offer support for it in future releases. That is, of course, if sales of the unit continue at a high enough level that developers keep churning out software for it.

Boffins at Northwestern University working on lithium-ion batteries have worked out a way to make them last a lot longer. By layering clusters of silicon in between the graphene sheets that make up one side of the battery - known as the anode - the researchers were able to pack in a lot more lithium.

The researchers poked holes in the graphene, providing a shortcut for the lithium to travel through and be stored by a reaction with the silicon. What it means is that by tweaking traditional lithium-ion technology it is possible to last a week and can be charged in 15 minutes. Sadly though it will be another four years before this technology hits the shops.

Sources are confirming that Nintendo is admitting that the projected 3 to 5 hours of battery life on the Nintendo 3DS are accurate when the unit is in 3D mode. As we told you previously, it will depend on the title and how well optimized it is to make use of the 3D mode, as well as how heavily the title uses the 3D mode to determine how much actual battery life a player will get.

Nintendo is admitting that the unit with the 3D mode off (and taking some other battery saving measures, such as turning off the wireless and dimming the screen) the 3DS is able to achieve battery life targets of over 8 hours without a problem. The 3DS will offer a “power-save” mode, but it isn’t clear when it is turned on what it will do to help save system power; but we suspect that wireless off and screen dimming are part of the strategy.

Analysts we spoke with today tell us that the battery life isn’t as big of an issue as the reaction of many consumers to the $249 price tag that was announced for the unit. Software that makes significant use of the 3D in a spectacular way will be necessary in order for the unit to be successful. Still, if most 3D titles hover close to the 3-hour mark in play time, the battery life could become more of an issue with buyers.

One of the biggest questions that we have been getting about the upcoming Nintendo 3DS is what kind of battery life it will have due to its 3DS support, higher performance hardware and bigger screen. Actually, we have finally been able to work our sources to get some real answers on this one.

Our sources are telling us that battery life on the 3DS is a tricky question, because so much depends on which mode the unit is running in and what it is actually doing. Assuming the worst case, if you are playing a 3DS title you end up with battery life of about 3 hours, but with some 3DS titles that could increase to as much as 5 hours, but not much more than that. According to whispers we are hearing, the average battery life for most 3DS titles will average about 4 hours of play time.

Battery life on the 3DS is at its worst when you are powering all three displays, and if you are rendering in full 3D it sucks the battery life; and if your wireless happens to be on, as well, you can start to see how all of this power demand adds up so quickly.

The better news might be that if you are using old DS titles you will get about 5 to 8 hours of battery life, but of course, that also depends on the game and other factors. This might not be the kind of battery life you were hoping for, but we suspected trouble when we found out that the 3DS would include a charging dock as part of the package. Recharge time from a full battery drain is said to take about 3 ½ hours.

While we hear that Nintendo is working on additional battery optimizations and will be working with software developers to provide better battery optimization within their software titles, we suspect that at least the first generation battery life of about 3 to 4 hours will be pretty much standard if you are playing 3DS titles. At least we know that the focus on the second generation model will be the battery life and form factor, and this gives us something to look forward to.

An analyst Shaw Wu, of Kaufman Bros has said that Rim's Blackberry Playbook tablet is doomed because of the gear's poor battery life. We are not sure where Shaw got his paws on a Blackberry tablet as no one has seen one, but he is citing sources that the tablet lasts just a few hours per charge.

He said that was enough for him to say that in comparison with Samsung’s Galaxy Tab, which lasts about six, and the iPad, which lasts upward of 10, the Blackberry tablet was doomed. He said that the lack of battery life was one of the reasons Rim delayed its launch of the Playbook to the May 2011 quarter.

Wu said that QNX, which is the OS on which PlayBook runs wasn’t originally designed for mobile environments but rather for devices like network equipment and automobiles where battery life isn’t so important. While using QNX into a tablet with a dual-core processor and a gig of RAM sounds cool it eats up too much juice.

He thinks that in the end they will have to supply a bigger battery which will make the gear heavier. Wu thinks that RIM will only sell 700,000 units in 2011, far less than the one million to eight million that other analysts have been calling for.

According to several reports that we have seen, apparently Second Life developer, Linden Labs, might be up for sale. Sources are suggesting that Microsoft is apparently considering the purchase of Second Life and the studio.

The rumors seem to have been fueled by an insider who is claiming that the company has been looking at offers for some time. The fire really started to blaze when a Tweet from Second Life Community claimed that Microsoft had already submitted a bid to Linden Labs and Second Life.

Of course, no one at Microsoft is commenting; and apparently Linden Labs has now put a lid on the talk as best that they can, saying that they refuse to confirm or deny whether any possible deal is in the works. Reports do suggest that the Linden Labs office has been shut down, and you can make of that what you will. While TechEye claims that the source supplying the information that they received is reputable and from an employee, you have to think that something might actually be afoot.